The Black-Eyed Children

It actually creeped me out enough to turn it off last night and I had to finish it this morning. It was creepy and eerie. It did leave me questions but I wasn't mad at that. What this movie does really well, is it plays on our fears and anticipation of what might happen. I loved the way it was filmed and the overall setting of the movie!

So a newly hired camp counselor shows up at a clearly deserted camp and immediately believes that ALL the children and other camp counselors are playing an elaborate prank on her and instead of calling the person that hired her who we've seen her talking to on her phone or going to the office to see if anyone is there she goes into the attic of the first building she entered and she finds records buried under other debris that are discolored with age wrinkled and starts calling the names on those files to ask why they aren't at the camp. Not a single action the woman makes from beginning to end makes any logical sense whatsoever which is a shame because when creepy stuff starts to happen it's ruined by the ridiculous setup.

A young woman takes a job at an autumn camp in the woods, only to arrive to find that all the children have mysteriously disappeared. But as night falls, much to her dismay, some of them return.

I really enjoyed The Final Frame (2025) so when Jozsef Gallai asked me to check out this film I jumped on it. It's currently streaming on Screamify.

I had actually done a short video discussing the lore of the black-eyed children, so this movie was on my watch list anyways. While I did enjoy it, it's not without issue. I wasn't a fan of the deviation from the supernatural, it leaned into a sci-fi feel more than I would have liked. You have Kata Kuna who is a Hungarian actress delivering lines in English and that hurt a bit. Her acting was good but her inflections and having to deliver so much exposition just made it hard for her. I want to be clear, I am not knocking her. I can barely speak one language.

I also feel like kids are inherently creepy and I wish Gallai would have leaned into that more. I know that there are budget restrictions and such that sometimes make it hard to film. If I remember correctly, there were upwards of double digit children missing in this story line but we only see three. The three we did get did a good job of being unsettling though.

Visually the scenery is gorgeous and the camp is eerie. There's an establishing shot of a spider web that for some reason just really stuck with me.

This film is pretty much the opposite of The Final Frame. Both are found footage and around 70 minutes. The Final Frame however lets the lens tell the story as it only has a few hundred words of dialogue. This one has a ton more dialogue and exposition. There is an 11 minute monologue in the middle of this film. Bravo to the actor to be able to deliver that in what seemed like one cut.

IMDb gives this one a 7.3/10 For me, it's a 5.0/10 Middle of The Morgue

Right or wrong, weak or strong...these are my opinions.